P.S. to my last, Aquamarine:
Just to be crystal clear: I want you to know that I started out as an enthusiastic supporter of Ted Cruz, as any review of my past posts would make plain.
But I was totally shocked, stunned by the shenanigans perpetrated against Ben Carson in Iowa by the Cruz campaign, and a number of like incidents subsequent to that.
Cruz claimed he knew nothing about these things -- plausible deniability at work. Then he finally apologized to Dr. Carson (while still maintaining he "knew nothing" about the incident -- Sgt. Schultz at his best); but the damage had already been done. It may be he eked out his narrow victory in the caucus because of the manifest falsehood, advanced by his campaign, that Dr. Carson had withdrawn from the race.
To me, incidents like this are nothing but dirty tricks; and only a crooked man, a dishonest man, would perpetrate them, or be a party to them, or a beneficiary of them.
Such a man is not fit to be President of the United States. Period.
Subsequently, I have found a fit description for Senator Cruz: He is a SOPHIST.
Sophist, noun:IMHO, this definition fits Ted Cruz to a tee; and I am simply disgusted with him.
a paid teacher of philosophy and rhetoric in ancient Greece, associated in popular thought with moral skepticism and specious reasoning; a person who reasons with clever but fallacious arguments.
He reminds me of the character Callicles (a vicious, conniving, ambitious man), in Plato's dialogue, The Gorgias. Callicles' argued that "might = right." He was the champion of moral relativism. In the dialogue, Socrates destroys this argument, and makes Callicles look like the FOOL he is.
So Callicles, out of revenge and sheer spite, colludes with a couple of buddies, and gets Socrates charged on a baseless allegation of "corrupting the youth of Athens," a crime for which Socrates was convicted and for which he received the death penalty....
The trial of Socrates is the story told in Plato's Apology....
I don't much care for Callicles -- nor Ted Cruz, who seems to resemble him to my mind.
Aquamarine, as Heraclitus said, "Character is destiny." I daresay Cruz is a man of bad character....
JMHO FWIW
Donald Trump has left behind him decades of broken promises, lies, vicious personal attacks on people who have done nothing more egregious than disagree with him, and monumental changes of heart/mind regarding his political allegiances. I referred to four (of many) such examples in my recent Patriot Post commentary, posted here just yesterday.
Yet, after being made aware of such characterless behaviors, spanning decades, rather than stepping back and analyzing such behaviors, many of his supporters instead either (1) choose to point to a single incident possibly committed by one of his political opponents, and/or (2) completely ignore, or denigrate without factual support, the evidence being presented against Trump's character.
I, and others, will be checking back here in late summer, once Trump has garnered the republican nomination, after which the media will be releasing a destructive version of the dogs of war such as we have never seen, 'conveniently' exposing the underside of every one of Trump's personal and business 'deals', after which the democrat nominee (whomever that will be, avowed socialist, or covert socialist/felon) will simply waltz into the White House and complete Mr. Obama's 'transformation of America'.
The most tragic aspect of that entirely choreographed scenario will be that there was a Reagan-esque leader who valiantly sought to prevent our republic's demise, and the American electorate turned their backs on him, according vocal and unyielding preference to a snake oil salesman who promised them what they wanted to hear, but whose promises were not worth the breath it took to utter them.
I know that I'm not going to change your mind nor are you going to change mine. We have both judged these men's character and drawn different conclusions.